Damn Straight

Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH (Photo: Davis Paul Ohm)

I should recuse myself right from the beginning. I’m not a neutral observer. I’ve got a lot of reservations about lawn cemeteries and John Llewellyn, author of A Cemetery Should Be Forever: The Challenge to Managers and Directors (Glendale, CA 1998), manages the cemetery that started that trend: Forest Lawn in California. I’ll extend a further disclaimer that I’ve never been to Southern California and have never set foot inside Forest Lawn. Who knows, I might love the place.

I was handed a copy of this book by Rachel Fox, manager of fourteen pioneer cemeteries for Metro, the local multi-agency operation that handles much civic responsibility here. I was inquiring as to the beginnings of commercial cemeteries: which was first? She thought Llewellyn might have an answer.

But first another story:

A few years back I happened to have a meeting with the manager of River View Cemetery, Portland’s premier “garden” or “rural” cemetery. While modest compared with other cities, our rural cemetery suits us fine. As I was leaving the meeting, I asked the director about the history of River View. I asked specifically about its design: who did it and how did it come about? The director opined that he thought there hadn’t been much planning at all, that they’d simply laid the roads out following the natural contours of the hill. Then he gave me a brochure detailing the history of the cemetery. Sure enough, the brochure commented on the many months of careful planning with landscapers and designers that were spent before any earth was moved. The director had neglected to read his own brochure.

Likewise, despite being seeped in the industry for three generations (his great uncle was Hubert Eaton, the messiah of Forest Lawn), Llewellyn apparently forgot to study his history. As far as Llewellyn is concerned, “the Burial Act of 1855 marked the beginning of cemetery development in Great Britain, although several cemeteries had been established earlier in London by private enterprise”; leaving one with the impression that this is what started it all in America, as well. Even the very invention of cemeteries didn’t impress Llewellyn. In his view, “when Hubert Eaton conceived his ‘memorial-park plan’ in 1917, he transformed the way cemeteries were operated and viewed by society. Up to that point, changes in cemeteries had been slow—evolutionary.” Llewellyn dismisses The roles of Père Lachaise and Mt. Auburn as being “influenced by [the] design” of rural cemeteries. He never mentions Albert Strauch and the creation of the cemetery superintendent position at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, even though a president of Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum wrote the foreword.

Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH (Photo: David Paul Ohm)

The reality is that Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, MA, a scion of Père Lachaise in Paris, was, in 1831, the first “rural” cemetery in America. Those cemeteries began the rural cemetery movement and could not have been influenced by it. Spring Grove and Albert Strauch made the first restructuring of the rural cemetery with the creation of the superintendent’s position, which he accompanied with design innovations presaging Eaton’s lawn cemetery. The real transformation of American cemeteries was ushered in with the invention of the commercial cemetery, which Llewellyn guesses to be around 1860, a date which seems reasonable. Still, it would be nice to know which cemetery that was, for that was a truly transformative move. That’s when death entered the market place.

A point Llewellyn doesn’t like to dwell on. He could have entitled his book, A Cemetery Is Forever. Instead he chose Should Be. Yeah, they should be; but are they, if they’re a commercial enterprise?

Llewellyn follows David Charles Sloan’s The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History in his classifications of American cemeteries: frontier, domestic, churchyard, potters’ field, municipal, lawn-park, and memorial park. “Frontier” in his definition means roadside grave left by pioneers on their way west. Technically, that’s a “grave site” and not a cemetery. “Lawn-park” and “memorial park” don’t appear significantly different and should probably be lumped together. Potters’ fields are historical appendages and don’t exist anymore outside institutional graveyards, such as asylums or prisons. By “domestic” he means family graveyards; they exist but are not an option for most people. That leaves us with churchyards, municipals, and memorial parks.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA (Photo: friendsofmountauburn)

I’m not sure that’s a helpful enough distinction. I’d argue that the most significant line should be drawn between civic and commercial cemeteries, with churchyards put in a category of their own. I would define “civic” as those cemeteries supported by a tax base, and “commercial” as those supported by corporations. A civic cemetery might generate enough income to not require tax support, but the ultimate responsibility for the maintenance of a civic cemetery is a governing body, be it city, county, state, federal, or otherwise. The responsibility for a commercial cemetery, whether for-profit or not, rests with the owner or, most often, owners.

Within those broad divisions, of course, there are many variations. Llewellyn manages to write an entire book about cemeteries and never mentions the Masons or the Odd Fellows; yet their cemeteries occupy a gray area straddling the line between civic and non-profit commercial. In spirit they’re closer to churchyards, as fraternal organizations are closer to churches than to governments or corporations. Perhaps we can lump church and fraternal cemeteries together as “community” cemeteries.

Any cemetery is open to abandonment, but we can rank the three cemetery types—civic, commercial, and community—by their likelihood of abandonment. With absolutely no statistics to back me up, I’d guess that it’s a toss-up between commercial and community, but that civic cemeteries, by the nature of the duration of governments, have the best chance at long term survival. Llewellyn only skirts the issue of whether or not corporations should be involved in the death business at all, whether it’s a proper subject to leave to the whims of the market place? He neglects to compare the life cycles of corporations versus the life cycle of governments. He never asks what happens when you give your eternity over to Pan Am or Bell Telephone? He never confronts the problem of when your cemetery starts to look like Detroit.

No indeed, most of his book is devoted to questions of cemetery management, which is its proper subject: how to make wise investments, make plans for the future, etc. His concern is how to keep the cemetery going, not what to do after it fails. He often talks about pricing, largely as an apologist for the industry, shaking his finger at the independent monument and casket sellers, not to mention at the cremation business. (He tells a story of someone being dusted with cremation ashes once, but never talks about stacks of bodies like cordwood outside mortuaries; and I assure you he would never mention necrophilia.) He stresses that one has to give quality service at a fair price in order to remain in business over the long haul, although he does admit that occasional price gouging does exist. He offers an interesting defense: “Although mortuaries’ prices have been criticized as being too high, consumers have not encouraged price competition.”

Ah ha! We knew it! Consumers are responsible for setting prices, not the seller. If only we’d grump more, prices would be lower. If we don’t grump, they’ll rise until we do. Why, that’s only fair, no? That’s what capitalism is all about: squeezing the last dollar out of you, even if you’re dead. So, if you want a better price on your funeral, write your funeral home now and tell them so. That ought to do the trick.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA (Photo: friendsofmountauburn)

There is a suggestion that Hubert should have been named Hubris. If there was one thing Eaton had faith in, besides his god, it was himself. The comment has been made, “someone along the line convinced him he had taste.” In a display of sweeping arrogance, Eaton proclaimed his “Builder’s Creed,” where he laid out his vision of a cemetery, one to which you’d better conform if you want to be buried in Forest Lawn: “I therefore know the cemeteries of today are wrong because they depict an end, not a beginning. They have consequently become unsightly stoneyards, full of inartistic symbols and depressing customs….” In one fell swoop he condemned everything that went before him. Your style of mourning depresses him or offend him. Individual expression, personal displays of remembrance are inadequate. We need the sage from Liberty to bring us the proper respect for the dead in a uni-grave system “where memorialization of loved ones in sculptured marble and pictorial glass shall be encouraged but controlled by acknowledged artists….” One can only presume that it was an acknowledged artist who suggested bringing in fake copies of famous Italian statuary. And surely it was an acknowledged artist who suggested putting a fig leaf on David. The last thing we need is a prick hanging out in the cemetery.

What Eaton was—and is—selling was a Christian view of life and death. As much as possible, he wanted to drive death from the cemetery. Starting with the name. No more cemeteries; from now on they shall be memorial parks. We don’t honor the fallen here, only the resurrection. “I believe, most of all, in a Christ that smiles and loves you and me.” Feel safe now?

An initial impulse that drove the creators of Père Lachaise was that their new cemetery should be an attractant for the populace. It was hoped people would come and stroll the grounds and be edified and uplifted by the sculpture and mausoleums doting the landscape. This theme was carried over to the rural cemeteries of America. Eaton did nothing new in attracting people to his cemetery; he simply broadened the base of offerings and made the whole design his design, rather than yours. In a way he was the Walt Disney of cemeterians. It’s no coincidence that both Disney World and Forest Lawn were born in Southern California; they share a similar gestalt.

Hollywood Forever Cemetery (Photo: Jennifer Gaillard)

A Cemetery Should Be Forever was published in 1998, the same year Tyler Cassity bought the moribund Hollywood Memorial Park. Llewellyn’s book was au courant in noting the newcomer. He was discussing endowment issues when he mentions Cassity. He warned “the buyer is taking on a huge challenge, and it isn’t clear how enough funds will be found to bring the cemetery up to even a minimal level of maintenance.” Cassity went on to steal Llewellyn’s title and rename his cemetery, Hollywood Forever. Welcome to the new Eaton. And from Missouri, nonetheless. He gets all the new star burials. He found the funds.

But will Hollywood Forever last forever? Probably no more so than Forest Lawn. You can put any shade of lipstick on them you’d like, but they’re still commercial cemeteries. One of these days they’ll disappear, go bankrupt, kaput. Welcome to Detroit.

Hollywood Forever (Photo: Jeremy Weatherly)

A Little History

I found what follows stuck in a folder in my computer. I'm no longer quite sure why I wrote it, but it's not a bad summary of the situation.

Cemeteries are, first and foremost, living spaces. Like any other cultural artifact, be it school, factory, town, library, shopping center, state, what-have-you, each cemetery has a life of its own. Living cemeteries are those still in use. They are not static. Their changes may be slow and subtle, but they continue all the time.

Dead cemeteries tend to disappear through neglect, forgetfulness, or conscious removal or destruction. Forgotten cemeteries continually reappear in the process of digging for foundations, road cuts, pipe lines, etc., while other dead cemeteries are among the best preserved, and best known, structures on the face of the Earth: the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and Stonehenge come quickly to mind. To be sure, given the considerable length of time humans have been here, most cemeteries have long been irretrievably lost. Nonetheless, long lost burial grounds are constantly discovered. In rediscovered cemeteries, aside from the bodies themselves, the most important findings are the trappings left with the corpse, the grave objects. One can often make the case that the single best window we have unto an ancient culture comes through through its grave offerings. Without them, our knowledge of the past would be much less full. And certainly when it comes to our most famous cemeteries, said Pyramids, etc., the cemeteries and their attendant objects far outweigh the bodies in importance. King Tut’s okay, but it’s his paraphernalia which really excites and informs us.

But there’s a disconnect between how we view ancient cemeteries and how we view our own, although the disconnect is not uniform across our culture. The disconnect is more than academic; it’s led to enormous changes in our burial practices which in turn are having a commensurate impact on the cemetery industry. A headline in The Oregonian from August 5, 2007, encapsulates the problem: Oregon cemetery plots go begging. The problem, author Anna Griffin contends, is that “more and more, particularly on the West Coast, consumers are choosing cremation over burial.” In Oregon, Griffin says, the cremation rate is now 65%, which corresponds to Portland Metro’s data of 67%. Just forty year ago the rate was 5%. The problem affects virtually all the state’s major cemeteries with the notable exception of the Veterans Administration cemeteries, which are constantly looking to expand; but their reason is simple: they give away their plots and pick up the burial tab. It’s an offer veterans and their wives find hard to refuse. Even in non-VA cemeteries, the incidence of government supplied markers often dominates the graveyard, but even that hasn’t stemmed the drain away from using the major cemeteries servicing the cities of the region. The stark truth is that cemeteries are now competing for a severely shrunken market. It’s bad enough that only 35% of people now opt for burial, but many of those left come from cultures which frown upon not being able to have upright, visible grave markers and hence shun the major cemeteries, which are invariably lawn cemeteries.

But it is a mistake to think that cremation is the cause of the cemeteries’ problems. The cemeteries’ problems are self-inflicted and cremations are a response to the problem; at worst they’re a symptom. There is nothing that prevents cremains from being buried. The problems are related to the disconnect, and much of the secret lies in the cultural response that requires some people to have upright monuments versus flush memorials. What might seem a minor cultural eccentricity affecting a small minority of non-assimilated Americans is in truth symptomatic of an underlying yearning of many people that is not being satisfied in conventional lawn cemeteries; a yearning that drives potential customers away from cemeteries and paradoxically towards cremation. What author Griffin failed to notice is that there is a whole class of cemeteries largely unaffected by the switch to cremation, ones right under the nose of the problem, as it were: the vernacular cemeteries.

Cemeteries for the most part can be divided into two classes: designer and vernacular, the difference in which is fairly self-explanatory and contained within their names. The designer cemetery appeared in Paris in 1804 under the name Père Lachaise. It’s still there and contains, among other luminaries, Jim Morrison. It was the first time anyone had tried to place the dead in a landscaped park designed especially for that purpose. (In fact, the idea for parks came out of cemetery design.) The intention of such early cemeteries was that the dead would have edifying monuments built over them which would be instructive to the masses who, hopefully, would come to visit them, bringing art and culture, as it were, to an artificially tamed landscape where the teaming masses can be enlightened in the open air. The first such cemetery built in the United States was Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, MA, in 1831, and it and many early similar ventures were started by horticultural societies. And they were extremely successful with thousands of people streaming to visit them on fine weekends to such as extent that traffic rules often had to be promulgated to contend with the throngs, with sometimes only plot-owners allowed to bring horses or carriages onto the grounds. The Eugene Masonic Cemetery, for example, had a city trolly come to its front door.

Two things happened to stem that tide of popularity: one was the invention of parks per se drawing the throngs of cemetery visitors to them instead. That invention, though, might have altered the use patterns of cemeteries, but wouldn’t alone have significantly affected the primary role of the cemetery: that of memorial ground had not cemeteries gone through further design changes that drastically altered their function.

By 1855 Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati had begun the process of consolidating management of the cemetery under one person, in this case Adolph Strauch, who introduced the idea of clustering large monuments on the side of open lawn areas, the size of which he also increased. The process reached its apogee some 58 years later when Hubert Eaton opened Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Glendale, CA, doing away with family uprights markers altogether and turning the entire operation into a lawn cemetery with stones flush to the ground for ease of maintenance. Eaton was following the time-honored American tradition of streamlining his business, making it more profitable, and cutting costs. But he took his idea one step further, one that exacerbated the problem begun with the implementation of the flush marker. Neither Eaton nor Strauch knew that in their efforts to maximize their profits and minimize their costs they were sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Eaton eliminated, not only the monuments to death that dominated the early designer cemeteries and which can still be seen in cemeteries such as Portland’s Lone Fire or Cottage Grove’s Fir Grove, but he tried to eliminate the very idea of death itself, as witnessed by the name change. “Cemetery” carried too much the burden of death with it, so he opted for “memorial garden” which immediately became the code for the new style of cemetery, to such an extent that sometimes older cemeteries changed their names to adopt the new nomenclature, such as Rest Lawn Memorial Park outside Junction City which is a pioneer cemetery that subsequently adopted the “memorial garden” tag. You can be sure that any cemetery you find with the name “memorial garden” attached will be a lawn cemetery. In cases such as Rest Lawn, and in many other vernacular cemeteries, one can see land developed prior to and after the invention of the lawn cemetery. Many pioneer cemeteries mistakenly adopted this approach and in many a charming wooded spot now sits next to a barren open plot.

Eaton didn’t stop their, though. Instead of shroud-draped statues and lamentations for the departed, Eaton erected his own monuments that avoided any mention of death, most often classical reproductions or Christian statuary. Eaton’s goal, essentially, was to chase death from the graveyard, and in this he pretty much succeeded. But in the process, he chased away his raison d’être. He could call his place a “memory garden,” but if there was nothing to remember, why end up there? Slowly, as memorial gardens spread, more and more people took up cremation. It’s not that they necessarily preferred cremation, but given the exorbitant cost of funerals, what’s the point if there’s no place to go remember your loved one? One flush stone next to another in a limitless lawn is hardly conducive to visitation and rumination. The very reason to visit a cemetery was largely eliminated. That was coupled to a cost explosion resulting from the American post-Civil War predilection for embalming and the sales insistence of the funeral industry into more and more expensive coffins. The bottom line became that traditional funerals and burials became exceedingly expensive while the product offered was in equal part diminished. It was a lot of money for something people didn’t use much, and subsequently they began pulling out of the lawn cemeteries altogether. Unless, of course, they were free.

Golden Paradox

Camp Polk, OR

I have this recurring fantasy that somebody’s going to want me to talk to them. You know, about cemeteries. I try to think of what is the most important message that I could leave about cemeteries. What is the essence of what I’ve learned from scouring nearly 600 graveyards?

Two things: One, that we’re in the golden age of cemeteries; and Two, that cemeteries are in danger of dying.

If they wanted, I could talk a little longer.

I could talk about what I meant by that. I could try and say it quickly before anyone had a chance to get bored.

Cemeteries? Puhleeease!

American Legion (Manzanita, OR)

Okay. First point. Golden Age. It’s the Golden Age because, in cemeteries’ public service function as historical art galleries and cultural museums, their current diversity is historically unsurpassed, with the possible exception of a few decades in the early nineteenth century. There is a greater variety of self expression and a greater quantity of information being given at gravesites now than at any previous time in our history — with the same prior caveat. The significant difference between this period and the early nineteenth century is that in its current format personal expression is afforded a much broader scope than previously in content, style, and class (my apologies; I know we aren’t supposed to talk about class in America; big no-no). There’s a greater range of design with a greater range of material being employed now than at any time in our history. And that includes the nineteenth century. If you want great cemeteries, they’re all around you.

Forest Lawn (Gresham, OR)

Second point. Cemeteries have been trying since 1855, with a certain sluggish success, to commit suicide by eliminating their very raison d’être as the locus of remembrance and display. Eighteen-fifty-five was the year Adolph Strauch at the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati became America’s first cemetery superintendent, initiating the long march away from upright memorials toward lawn cemeteries, where the stones are flush with the ground in the name of efficiency. The result being that the very purpose of a memorial marker, to be a visible place of remembrance and demonstration, became less and less possible until in the end the customer started to look for other options, cremation being the main culprit. Today, the only lawn cemeteries not looking frantically at all possible options in order to stay afloat — at least around here – are the national cemeteries, and they only thrive by giving their product away. A Sunday (August 5, 2008) Oregonian headline summed up the situation for everyone else as “Oregon cemetery plots go begging.”

Skyline Memorial Gardens (Portland, OR)

Well, what do they expect after trying to do away with headstones for 150 years? If you can’t find your grandparents out there in the vast field, much less honor them with decorations, might as well just burn them to a crisp and throw them in the ocean. More than half the people in Oregon currently do just that. Good job, cemetery industry. The only segment of the cemetery industry making waves at present is the green cemetery movement, and they do away with headstones altogether. If cemeteries weren’t dead before, that ought to kill them. Granted, burial can be much more “green” than cremation, with its attendant problems, but burial without a sense of place is about as good as mass ditches. It’s just one more reason to crank up the old furnace.

That’s it. That’s what I know about cemeteries. Oh, there’s a bunch of other little stuff, but those are the two biggies: Golden Age and dying. That’s all you have to remember. You can go back to your regular programming, now.

P.S.

Needless to say, if you want a good cemetery-cum-art gallery, skip your local lawn cemetery, although even they are bending to pressure now-a-days and are finding ways to sneak uprights into their mix (except for the freebie place). Pack a lunch; head for the hills. Tell ‘em the Dead Man sent you.

South Yamhill (McMinnville, OR)